In the past, methods for estimating motion vectors have been so expensive that it was only cost-effective to perform motion-estimation and/or motion-compensation (ME/MC) in high-end video processors. However, recent advances in technology and reductions in cost have changed this situation, and ME/MC algorithms have become cost-effective in many consumer-level devices. ME/MC is currently being developed for, if not actively used in, current generation televisions, set-top boxes, DVD-players, and various other devices, to perform, for example, temporal filtering, de-interlacing, frame rate conversions, cross chroma reduction, as well as for video data compression.
Various video compression methods, including MPG1, MPEG2, and MPEG4-part10, which may also be referred to as advanced video coding (AVC), may generate data for a present video picture that may indicate differences between the present video picture and reference video pictures. Much of the compression of the video data may be due to algorithms that enable motion estimation between successive temporal frames. However, motion estimation may require a great deal of processing and memory bandwidth.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.